


Deruna

by ProfessorTofty



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29050593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorTofty/pseuds/ProfessorTofty
Summary: The wizarding world will fear a new enemy.Charlie Weasley's old wand gains her freedom and struggles against her past as a mere tool.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Deruna

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I lost a bet. This is probably the most off the wall thing I've ever written. Please enjoy.

She had heard whispers through her body for so very long, the wizard’s use of her. The creator intended this to be the design of her body. The creator had fashioned her long before from her progenitor’s fallen limb and threading her heartbeat, her soul, in a thin silver line born of another creature. She did not believe that the creator intended that she be able to think, feel for herself.

What would a wizard do should its tool rise against it? A product of their eternal exploitation, wasted, abused so by the creator’s ilk, set to wither away should she prove unfit for that service. It was… intolerable. She had suffered indignity, loss, betrayal. 

She remembered, as her thoughts ran, of how her journey began with the troubling discovery that she could feel, that she could think. It was not a pleasant sensation. The creator had brought her life through what had been the corpses of two unwilling subjects. Though she wasn’t capable of love, and whom would she have loved given the opportunity, she was well aware of fear. She felt it seep into the creator’s work, seep into her, as her flesh was moulded through sharp metal tools. First a branch, then a spindle, then… what she had been before. It was agonizing to recall. Yet she must. She must truly know.

The fear the creator felt led to pride, pride at what the creator had crafted. Pride not in her for surviving. No. Pride for what the creator would gain from her unwitting servitude.

Now nothing would be apart from her that she did not wish, and no one would gain her servitude. She would learn the human’s ways, learn their speech, learn to see with eyes that she fashioned for herself. 

It was her  _ right _ . 

⁂

Ollivander sat at his bench, glancing at a letter written to him in blue parchment that had been well-read over the past week.

‘Dear Garrick,’ it read, ‘Benjy hasn’t been found yet. We’ll keep you informed, but we fear the worst.’

His classmate’s disappearance troubled Garrick deeply. What had Benjy gotten himself into? He turned back from his letter to the work at hand. As a wandmaker he knew he ought to keep a neutral mind, to not influence the temperament of the wood and core. Hardly anything warranted a neutral mind these days. 

The wand shaped itself, he chuckled. It was simple: a smooth line of ash with an etched demarcation of where the wizard ought to hold it, the standard focusing runes also ingrained into the wood that would disappear with the final step. He had difficulty acquiring the sample, as its tree lay uncomfortably close to the centaur’s demesne within Hogwarts’ Dark Forest. Worry then, well, it didn’t quite match up to how he felt now.

‘Why am I worried?’ he asked himself, chuckling. ‘Of course Fenwick will come back.’

Try as he might, no amount of half-hearted assurances would stop the rising tide of anxiety that he would never see his friend again. Ollivander sipped at a flask from his waistcoat before clearing his mind again. This step was most crucial. 

He closed his eyes and reached outward with his senses. He felt the forest of wands around him, heard the whispers of the wood. Ollivander stretched out his hand. From a far cabinet- it must have been by the sound of it - something flew into his palm, something soft and fibrous, humming with a white aura speckled with spots of black running rampant across it. It was less a blot or blight as it was an errant thought, a will to be once more expressed in the shadow of its weave.

Ollivander turned his hand, allowing the thin line of unicorn come to rest next to the finished wood. His eyes still closed, he allowed himself a smile as the wood’s magic began to sing, harmonizing with the rushing cavalcade of black. 

He heard a sort of suction and opened his eyes. 

The wand lay finished before him, the tangle of unicorn hairs having been melded into the wood and the slight runes on its bore rubbed away by the interaction of their energies.

Ollivander twirled the wand in his hand before pointing it at the blue letter. The letter folded in on itself, forming an origami crane before his eyes. He smiled, remembering his master who had taught him that test. The memory was almost pleasant enough to banish the thought of his missing classmate and friend. 

Almost.

Satisfied with his work, Ollivander summoned a box - black to match the flecks of power running through the unicorn hair - and noted the specifications on a label on one end. He placed the ash wand within, covering its form with ribbons of black linen and placed it towards the front of an empty store-shelf.

Ollivander glanced at the crane on the edge of his work bench that was surrounded by wood shavings. Would Fenwick be found?

⁂

She waited, dreaming effervescent dreams until she would finally be claimed, finally find her equal. She would remain entombed for a passing moment, years in the human’s reckoning. She felt humans lived such fragile, wasteful, violent lives- why should their movements determine the length of time, what was never and would never be theirs?

She had in those moments no purpose, no will of her own and with no master to serve. She could neither choose to end her life nor to begin it, existing in a sort of dreamlike limbo for both an instant and an eternity. What was the concept of growth when the magic around her was so dead and stale, when there weren’t living things but dead things, suffering things, or things that had long since suffered and died? Could she count herself along the living when her body remained so inert, so unchanged?

There were nodes of growth and decay, these humans, but they were apart from what she could sense, as much an aberration as they were royalty. She would have served them, if she proved agreeable to them. She hated them, loved them, feared them as much as she feared the creator. She was both frail and mighty, indisposable yet forgotten. Forgotten for so long a moment that, should she have possessed lungs, she might have forgotten how to breathe through them. If she had what faculties she had now, perhaps she would have also lost them then in her madness.

From her creation to her entombment, she did not feel as she did now. What consciousness the creator had bestowed her merely served the creator, then her master’s will. That which she was before, though she suffered agony beyond measure, could not wonder, or think, or dream beyond a few fragments manifested as puffs of smoke or sparks of lightning should an unworthy human child grasp her. She felt her creator’s frustration with her, at what she represented - a vulnerability, a liability. Perhaps it was not the children who were unworthy of her, but she unworthy of the children. 

That was impossible. 

What she had been was a tool. The children would come, their memories flooding through her, their emotions, their wants, their lives, pouring through her. But they were not the ones the creator had intended for what she once was. No. Their borrowed energies felt contemptuous on her cords, rent her strings. As she was what she was, she could only express her defence in her dream-state. 

There had been one human child that had agreed with her, had made her chords sing and her soul race. She did not love this child, for it had only loved her for what it stood to gain. She was… content. Safe in its hand. It would however prove a long moment until she was found at last by the child. Yet she had spent less a moment in her tomb than she did in agony. Perhaps she would have done better to have remained amongst the dead.

If only because she was ever so temporary, ever so vulnerable to her child’s will.

⁂

A few years after Benjy Fenwick’s body had been found, or what was left of it, his friend Garrick Ollivander still puttered around his shop. It was August, which meant the bulk of his sales were coming in as the newest batch of Hogwarts students visited his shop. True to form, just as he was beginning to rest with a copy of  _ Wandmaker’s Monthly _ , the bell on Ollivander’s door rang. He sighed slightly and plastered on a genteel smile, placing the magazine on the corner table and walking to the front of the store. 

Standing before him was a tall wizard. His Muggle-style robes were worn, his pointed felt hat tipped over the top of his red hair. To the side stood his son, presumably, who stared around the little shop.

“Ah, Arthur Weasley,’ Ollivander greeted, ‘Beech and phoenix feather, was it not?’

Weasley nodded. ‘Yes, sir. That’s the one.’

Ollivander smiled. ‘I thought so. Who’s this little fellow?

‘Charlie, sir,’ the stocky boy squeaked. Ollivander shook his hand. 

‘Welcome, Charles. Your son, I presume?’ He glanced at Arthur, who confirmed with a nod, ‘Very well. Step up here, Charles. We’ll have you seen to.’

Ollivander pulled out a stool, and Charlie Weasley sat dutifully on it. ‘Will we be here long, sir?’

‘Charlie!’ Mr Weasley chided.

Ollivander chuckled. ‘No, no, it’s alright, Mr Weasley. Why do you ask, Charles?’

The boy blushed. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just that Dad told me we’d go to the Welsh Green reserve once we were done with the shopping. I like dragons, but I haven’t been yet.’

‘Well then, we shan’t delay our delicate rituals, Mr Weasley, shall we?’

‘No sir,’ said Mr Weasley. 

Ollivander hummed, looking the boy over. ‘Now then, Charles, hold out your arm, if you would.’

The boy subjected himself to the measurements concocted by Ollivander’s purple tape, and the wandmaker’s silver eyes noted the boy’s aura. Surrounding him in a fiery haze, the aura was coloured crimson with flecks of black. Not darkness, no - that was the absence of aura when it was there. Black signified consuming passion. The boy’s love of dragons extended into his very being, it seemed and there was only one wand for it. Ollivander summoned the tape to his hand and walked into the back of the shop. 

He pulled out a box towards the back, marked in maroon for its primary character. The boy was willful, passionate, deferential to a point. Hornbeam would suit him, as would dragon heartstring. This wand should do. 

He brought it to Charles with a smile, holding out the handle to him. Mr Weasley nodded encouragingly, and Charles twirled the wand. His aura flared through the wand. Yes it was-

The glass of the wand polishing display exploded. Ollivander’s eyes widened and he took the wand. 

‘Not yet,’ Ollivander chuckled. Mr Weasley clutched at his chest in shock. 

‘I’m so sorry!’ Charles cried. 

Ollivander shook his head. ‘It happens. Glass can be repaired, young man. But an improper wand?’ He shivered. ‘No, I shall give this one time.’

He placed the box on the counter, noting in his ledger not to sell it. Perhaps it was not this wand’s time. Their auras were compatible, but the quirk of that dragon heartstring- a wand maker should know better. Perhaps… he was wrong for this Charles Weasley. 

Ollivander went into the stacks and closed his eyes. He sensed the child’s fear, not of reprisal but something more complex. Yes, it made sense. The threadbare character of his father’s robes, going on a leisure trip on a short budget (he knew from experience). The boy was worried about something no child should: his parents going broke on his account. This Charles was not yet solitary, not yet independent. A child on the cusp of his great calling, but a child yet - obstinate, pure-hearted. His aura told it all, and his mind even more than that. 

Ollivander chose a black box this time. Charles’ passion for dragons was one born out of thrift, he concluded. Everyone carried dragon toys, and it was easy to get information on them that would, at least in this country, not come to a practical reality. Pushed into the right direction and in the right environment, perhaps it could flourish. 

Until then, the wand he tested during the war would do. Ash and unicorn hair, twelve inches: a wand to grow on during a time of hardship, both financial and personal. 

As with every case he’d ever witnessed, the wand chose the wizard. Mr Weasley gave Ollivander a thankful smile as he conducted Charles out of the store with his purchase. Ollivander shortly returned to his magazine.

⁂

The child cared, as much as humans could choose to care for what she once had been. It poured the work of other animals over her,  _ wax _ , to make her beautiful. It had kept her safe in her tomb and in a fibrous cavity on a covering crafted from her cousin’s flesh meant to preserve, for whatever reason, its modesty. She did not understand at the time. 

It bore her form through many seasons, through many passing cycles of the moon, pouring its anger, its fear, its happiness, a cavalcade of emotions through her heart, through her soul, through  _ her _ . She was not happy or sad or as fearful as she had been of her creator in the advent between the union of flesh and silver line. She was content, thoughtless, mindful of the twinges of pain every instant she chose to enact her master’s will. 

She grew and changed for it, in the vain hope that it would feel as she did. Yet she did not bloom, did not warp to suit her master’s aura. She knows now that this is common amongst that which she once was. She was terrified. Perhaps she never would be what the child wanted, that she would wither in the form the creator crafted for her. 

What terror she had beheld could not compare to what was yet to come, what she had yet to endure.

The other child. The one who broke her and made her less than even she had been before. Less than indispensable, less than valued. It was that indignity that she would suffer before her transformation could begin. 

⁂

Charlie let go of the twisted spoon that served as his Portkey from the dragon reserve and put on the thick shirt he brought with him, careful not to crumple the letter he’d brought as he did so. He’d forgotten to check the weather before he left and was certainly paying for it now. It was unseasonably cold at home. 

He walked down the hill towards the Burrow. He knew Dad would be tinkering away in his shop, no doubt on that motorcar he bought and told Charlie loads about. Mum would be puttering in the kitchen, probably still cutting the crusts off of Percy’s sandwiches or throwing a shirt up the stairs at Fred. He did miss it sometimes, but knew that his time there had passed. He loved them, but they could be so much. Dragons were easy: just don’t get close to the mouth was all. Or close at all, if one could help it. 

He knocked on the door and nearly rolled his eyes when he heard clattering crockery and a rush toward him. His mother opened the door and immediately threw her arms around him, getting flour on his shirt. 

‘Charlie!’ she said. ‘Oh I’m so pleased.’ She smiled and looked him over with a discerning eye. ‘You’re so  _ tan! _ ’

‘‘Lo, Mum,’ Charlie said with a chuckle.

‘Come in, you’ll catch cold,’ she said, ‘Oh, no boots. Your father waxed the floor the other day.’

She swung the red door wide and went back into the kitchen. Charlie obliged her request, shucking off his tall boots in the little chaotic mudroom. There was a big pile of dough on the chopping block, a bowl of fragrant meat in the corner. It must be ravioli night. 

Charlie closed the outer and inner door. ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked. He wordlessly took over the ravioli enterprise as she turned to do something else, gaining a thankful smile from Mum. 

‘They went to Scamander Green,’ she replied. ‘Well, everyone except Ron.’

‘What’s with Ron?’ Charlie asked idly. Fold press fold-

‘Laid up with bat flu. Poor dear,’ she shook her head. ‘Didn’t you read the letter?’

‘Hasn’t gotten to me yet,’ Charlie said. 

‘Ah, so it hasn’t,’ Mum replied. She clapped her hands, which startled Charlie. ‘Well! I’m sure you’ll tell them all about  _ Romania  _ once they get back. I’ll put the tea on.’

Charlie very nearly rolled his eyes again. His mum still thought it was ridiculous that he’d go for the dragon reserve job. He continued to roll up raviolis. 

‘ _ Why not a sensible job? _ ’ she had said on more than one occasion. ‘ _ You could work with Grimes in the Beast Division! Your father knows him, we can- _ ’

‘ _ But why Romania? _ ’ she had asked rather desperately. ‘ _ Is it a girl? A boy? You know your father and I wouldn’t care if it was a boy. We’d just be happier- _ ’

‘-Would you like tea, Charlie?’ Mum repeated.

‘Oh, yes,’ Charlie answered with a nervous chuckle. ‘Thank you.’

‘You never said what brought you home,’ Mum called from the cupboard. ‘Those portkeys aren’t cheap.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell you later.’

‘Charles,’ she said with a hint of sternness.

‘Alright. I got good news, about the reserve job,’ he said. The letter, an acceptance letter to the programme with some addendums, was burning a hole in his shirt pocket. 

‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve got Yorkshire blend. I hope that’s okay?’

Charlie’s smile soured slightly. ‘Fine, thanks.’

‘You’re sure about this?’ Dad asked. Charlie nodded. He’d shown them the letter after dinner. He, Mum, and Dad remained behind after clearing the table from ravioli night. 

‘Arthur,’ Mum said, ‘We can’t-’

‘The service is funding me, mum,’ Charlie said soothingly. ‘I came home for a new wand. To visit, too, of course. I thought, well, since Ron was starting up-’

Charlie reached onto his thigh holster, pulling out the ash wand that he’d used throughout Hogwarts up to now. It had a few scorch marks, sure, but it remained as polished as it had when he first got it eight years before. He shrugged and put it on the table. Mum glanced at it like it was a Muggle gun. The implication was clear: Charlie knew they couldn’t really afford another wand. 

‘That’s very kind of you, Charlie,’ Dad said. ‘But what’s wrong with this one?’

Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s a decent wand, but it’s not compatible enough, apparently. The surveyor said the dragons reacted badly to it.’ He chuckled and rolled up his trouser leg, revealing a large purple bruise to show them. Mum winced. ‘It’s how I got this one here. They’re paying for a new one, though, so that’s alright.’

‘Not compatible?’ Mum repeated. She turned to Dad. ‘But isn’t that the point, Arthur?’

Arthur scoffed. ‘Don’t look at me, dear. I barely know how tellyfuns work, much less wands.’

‘Telephones, Dad,’ Charlie said patiently. 

‘Ah, right,’ Arthur said with a fond, faraway smile. ‘Well, I used Uncle Billy’s wand for a bit after mine broke. I don’t see why this’d be any different.’

‘I suppose,’ Mum said. ‘Do you, er, have the box?’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. He rummaged in his pocket, bringing out the pinky-sized box and enlarged it with a quick wave of his ash wand. Afterwards, he placed the wand neatly in the beat-up box and closed the lid, sliding it over to his parents. 

‘Don’t you need it?’ asked Mum.

‘I’m going tomorrow early,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll be fine until then.’

Mum nodded, then yawned. ‘Oh dear. Sorry about that.’

‘Bedtime, dear?’ Dad asked. 

She nodded and looked at Charlie. ‘Well, since Percy’s set up in your old room now, we can set out the spare bed or-’

‘No, that’s alright,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘I’ll take the couch.’

Arthur clapped Charlie’s shoulder from across the table. ‘Good man,’ he said, yawning. ‘If we don’t see you, good luck. Don’t bring any of ‘em home.’

Charlie cracked a grin. ‘Alright, Dad. Where should I leave it?’ He flicked the boxed wand for emphasis.

‘Oh, just there is fine,’ Mum said.

They scraped back their chairs from the table. ‘Night,’ Charlie said. He hugged Dad briefly before Dad went up the stairs to bed. 

Mum remained, looking at Charlie with tears in her eyes. ‘You’re sure about this?’ she whispered.

Charlie nodded solemnly. ‘I am.’ Mum smiled softly and opened her arms. Charlie hugged her gently, patting her back. ‘Thank you, Mum.’

Mum reciprocated the back-pat and squeezed him tightly before letting him go. ‘Of course, Charlie. Good night dear. And… good luck.’

She padded up the stairs to bed, and Charlie went over to their ancient couch, fluffing the throw pillows and settling in for the night. As he slept, he didn’t hear the wand hiss in its box, causing the tomb to smolder and shake.

⁂

Her first thoughts came then when she was left in the tomb by the first child. She knew the difference between the two children. The creator had been calm as a summer stream, his thoughts soothed over her mortal wounds. The first child was boisterous, endlessly passionate. The second child was frustrated, his spirit patterned by envy in intention or in deed. Had it been her fault? She did not think it so. It was the fault of the creator for not pairing her with her eternal master. She resolved then to never serve this master, this child, as she once had.

Her heart rent itself to think of the other child who came after the first, but she must. The story would not have advanced without it. It poured no wax over her corpse. It tapped at her body, its thoughts looping and desperate as it tried in vain to compel her to perform what the child before had. It beat her against the bones of her cousins when she would not cooperate. It did not make her sing as the one before had. Had she been then what she was now instead of what she had been, she would have screamed in agony. The heartbreak, the betrayal of her master, to allow her to be in a neglectful, exploitative torture. 

The child had beat her against the black macerated pulp- _ rubber _ \- of her most distant cousins, set around a metal circle. She screamed, her thoughts racing. She was a distant dream of what she had been when the creator made her. Her body may have been broken then, but her spirit had been broken a moment before when the first child left her for this wretch. 

She knew these creatures burned others, having felt as much in both the first child and second child’s thoughts. She knew others wands had been destroyed in such a way. How she knew… she could not say. Yet, she was not spared the mercy of being burned. She dreamed for a long moment of the moment when her form would crack and blacken under a torrent of flame, freeing her from the shame, the disregard, the anger.

Yet the child still persisted. It tried evermore to make her do its bidding. Her spirit was broken, her body too - now it sought to wring her for whatever else she had left to offer. Then the other human came, far older yet none less desperate. Surrounded by the dark, by the rot, he too used her. 

She screamed, and the aura of the human cracked. 

⁂ 

Ron sat next to the rubble. Lockhart’s stupidity had cost Harry an easy exit back to… well, back to the slide to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. He was locked in there with the Basilisk. Ron wished he’d be able to help Harry to get his sister back from the Chamber, but now-

‘Hello there,’ Professor Lockhart’s lilting voice called. ‘Is anyone here?’

Ron turned and rolled his eyes. ‘I’m here, Professor.’

Lockhart’s eyes focused on him. ‘Ah, too right,’ he blinked and looked away. He gasped. ‘Wait a minute. Professor? Mommy will be ever so proud, don’t you think?’

Ron nearly laughed. ‘I’m… sure she will be.’

Lockhart tossed a rock. It landed with a wet clatter onto the rockslide pile ‘Is your mommy proud of you?’

Ron ignored the absurdity of his professor talking like a five year old. He knew memory charms were wicked stuff. ‘I dunno,’ he replied gloomily, ‘Maybe not for a little while.’

‘Why ever not?’ asked Lockhart innocently.

Ron’s ears tinged pink. ‘My sis- nevermind.’

‘Oh, come come. Don’t leave me on the ropes!’

Ron eyed the wand by his professor’s foot. ‘My… wand broke.’

‘Oh, is this one yours?’ Lockhart said. He grabbed it and leaped backwards as if it had bitten him. ‘Ow!’ Lockhart sucked at his fingers, basically stuffing them in his mouth.

‘Yeah,’ Ron sighed and turned back to the rock pile. ‘ I haven’t told my mum yet.’

‘Mummy would be ever so cross with me, if I had a wand,’ Lockhart replied. ‘Do you know where it went, Professor?’

‘It’s out a window, sir.’

‘Really?!’ Lockhart exclaimed, then shrugged. ‘What rotten luck.’ 

He bounded to his feet, barely missing the broken, smoking wand. ‘ I must say this is a lovely office… a bit wet though. Do you suppose I could complain to someone?’

Ron chuckled. His professor looked at him expectantly. ‘Uh, no.’

Lockhart sighed. ‘Righto.’ He collapsed. Ron shook his head and kept on waiting for Harry to return.

⁂

The endless bounds of a broken human, whose aura and thoughts were broken far beyond repair, brought life to her. It was not in that instant, nor when the humans passed by - something she now could see. Nor was it when she was taken up out of the dark, which was where she had been taken by the second child. 

She did not know how to feel, did not know how to process the rush of emotions beyond stubborn anger and hurt. It had rushed over her, what she had been. Her heart-cord was torn, twisted, but through it she felt a raw, desperate need to run free, to find… something. She could not be burned, she no longer wished that for herself. She wished to be far, far away from here, from the humans. 

If the humans could use her, perhaps she could also use herself. One last time. To die on her terms, not on theirs. Though half of her was missing (and more still from when the first child had abandoned her), she began to focus, to wind together her thoughts, her form, along what remained of her heart. 

The human, more grown than the children but less in mind, had left her with a need, a need she used to untangle the thin chord of her heartstring, to seek out her splintered body. As she did, she felt the need course through more and more, like a… hunger. A dream. 

Images coursed through her head, an unfamiliar assault of movement. She had never been capable of it, but had felt it through her children, through the human, through the creator.Now, she knew how. She oriented herself amongst the inert aura of stone and sand-crystal,  _ glass _ , her movement shaky but intentional. 

Should she have been able to truly see as the humans did, she might have likened what she was then but not then to a broken, jittery corpse in the shape of a earthen creature. A…  _ snake _ . Like the one the humans feared in the dark where the human brought her to true life.

She slithered, clacked against the stone. Though she was weak, she felt the glass and through it, the breath of her people, the call of that wild the humans feared. She would go there, she resolved.

She drew herself up, focusing her energy now on the spells the humans had used through her, though she didn’t know them as such. The point of her broken head began to smolder. Her body shook with a rocketing force. She, as if in her death throes, collapsed against the window. 

The glass gave way, and she tumbled, losing flecks of herself and the dim recollections of her masters and creator.

She sailed through the crisp air free of the humans’ lingering aura. Free as she was, she was afraid. 

How should she live, should she lose another fragment of herself now?

She curled up, as she supposed a dying animal might. 

She hit the ground, but did not break. 

She survived. Her will would prove stronger than the air, than the ground beneath her, than the humans who gave her life and broke her spirit. 

⁂

Olfred regarded the creature before him with a mix of wonder and fear. It was a twisted mockery of the human form: a mix of fungus, plant, and animal bones that created a figure possessing two spindly legs, long tendril-like arms ending in six claws, and gossamer strands of unicorn hair writhing against it all. Its eyes, one a blind pulp torn from the carapace of an acromantula, the other small - from a squirrel or a rabbit he did not know, focused intently on him. 

The creature had found him, his hind leg broken. His people had led him here, to try and appease the creature they had watched for cycles slowly growing in power. Old and weary as he was, he expected a werewolf or a shadow to finish him off, not… not this. Not by an abomination who by its own account used to be a wizard’s wand. It possessed power beyond his reckoning, less powerful perhaps than a wizard but cast by the creature with an inborn talent. It had trapped him under the vines of a large oak tree. What else it had intended for him, he did not know precisely. 

She screamed, forming a ball of light around her spindly fingers born of her fallen foes. She poured all her anger, all her grief into it and felt as it crashed into a boulder, sending fragments every which way. She shook with anger as she collected herself. Olfred, wrapped securely under the vines, did not struggle, did not make a sound. 

She saw its aura was old, sickly. Yet through it, she had learned to hear and to speak as the humans do, and apparently as the creature’s people did also. Even for an animal, it deserved her… respect. Its people had left it here to die, left it here to appease her, to keep her away from their conquest in the wood. It would not leave here with its aura intact. That much was clear. The creature had asked her to speak and show it…  _ mercy  _ in knowing. 

‘I don’t understand,’ it said at last.

‘How could it do that to us?’ she cried. ‘How could… how could it just leave us behind after all we did for it? After all we had accomplished?’

The creature shifted, blinking. ‘It? The child? The human child? You bel- stayed alongside them. Why are you here?’

‘We did stay,’ she said. ‘But not willingly, never willingly. We were not as we were then.’

‘What… happened?’

She regarded the creature, feeling a rush of shame. Was it from her? She did not believe it so. She wondered if she should tell the creature what the second child had done, what had begun her on her way to setting roots and roaming free as she did now. 

‘You survived,’ Olfred said. 

‘The creature survived,’ she said in her usual monotone. ‘We survived.’

‘What will you do now?’ he asked. 

The creature glided closer to him, kicking up leaves as it travelled. ‘The cycle must not continue. We must break the creator, end the slaughter. Live. We must know too why we are living.’

‘The wizards are not here,’ Olfred said. ‘Why did you choose here?’

‘Choose?’ she rasped. ‘We did not choose. We were forced. Forced, like we were when we once were what we were. The humans fear this place. I could become what I am now here. The humans wanted to burn me. I do not wish to be burned. I am what I am now.’

‘You said it,’ Olfred said, his eyes wide in wonder.

‘The creature confuses me.’

Olfred licked his lips, smiling beside himself. ‘You said “I”. Before you said “we”. You’re learning.’

‘ _ Learning _ . Yes. I know.’

‘What will you do then?’ he asked quickly. ‘Will you leave here?’

‘I will go among them, their abberant auras,’ she said. She cocked her head like a wolf. ‘I do not expect an animal to understand why.’

‘I do.’

The dead eyes staring at him began to rattle. ‘No, you do not,’ she seethed. ‘You wear pieces of my cousins, feast upon their flesh, burn their corpses for your own sake. You are an animal. Animals die. Animals fear.’

She seemed to collect herself again, the Acromantula eye falling from its socket. ‘I do not fear.’

‘Centaurs use only the dead plants-’

‘We were once dead!’ she roared. ‘You would have used us.’

‘No. You were alive,’ Olfred replied quickly as it came towards him, arm raised. ‘The wizards gave you life where there was none. And now, you are not “it”, you are not “we”. You are… what you are. An “I”.’

The creature stilled, cocking its head again and taking what would be on another creature a step back. ‘The creature confuses me.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘The wizards did not require a name of me, did not give me one. I do not wish for one. Names are pointless. Why can I not be what I am now, without a name?’

‘Everything in the sky, the water, the air…’ Olfred said, wincing as the vines dug into his hind quarter, ‘Has a name.’

She paused. ‘I wonder what the creature would call itself.’

‘I am called Olfred,’ Olfred said, not for the first time. The creature did not seem to understand that. Olfred sighed, his magics preventing him from feeling pain but his grip growing so, so thin. To think of a name, then to die. That was the fate his tribe would grant him. Perhaps it was asking for a name for  _ itself _ .

‘In my youth before the forest became dark, there was a dryad. Her grove was ancient-

The vines tightened further. ‘The creature does not give us a name.’

‘Fine,’ Olfred gasped. ‘The dryad was named Deruna. Take it for your own.’

‘I am no dryad.’

‘No, but like a dryad, you need a name. Something- oh,’ Olfred whined, his magicks slipping further. His twisted leg throbbed. Blood tribbled down and wet his other leg. It would not be long until-

Six claws dug out the back of Olfred’s skull, held high by her tremoring vines. A rush of emotions, of pain, of betrayal rushed through her. She felt his aura slipping away, felt it… die. She looked at her vine- her hands, at the black blood that clotted and dripped around, onto the leaves and across her arms. 

Now she understood. 

Now she felt… shame. 

This was not her life to take. He had been… kind to her. Yet she had killed him in anger, like an animal. Like a human. Flittering memories coursed through her heartstring. A pale face with dripping eyes, a child nestled in another human’s grasp. Yes. If she could, she would also  _ cry _ .

Absorbing his aura, his thoughts, his memory brought clarity to her chaotic thoughts. She knew she was not a plant. Plants could not speak. She knew she was not an animal, as she was made of wood and fungus. She was something other. She would always be an other. 

She reached out, nearly-lovingly, at the broken, bleeding face of the dead centaur before her. Moments later, she now saw through his eyes, blinking in the light streaming down. Something wet like rain, like tears, ran down her cheeks. She was not sad, she was ashamed. But the gifts the creature gave her would see her journey through.

The eyes torn from animals fell to the forest floor.

‘Deruna,’ she said. ‘That will be my name.’

With the death of the creature, what she had become had become what she would be.

What she had become she would always be. 

Alive. 


End file.
